HCUP State Emergency Department Databases (SEDD) File Composition - Number of Hospitals by Year

What types of hospitals are included in the SEDD depends on the information provided by the Data Organizations and how the files were handled during HCUP processing.

Community hospitals, as defined by American Hospital Association (AHA), include "all nonfederal, short-term, general and other specialty hospitals, excluding hospital units of institutions." Included among community hospitals are academic medical centers and specialty hospitals such as obstetrics, gynecology, ear nose throat, short-term rehabilitation, orthopedic, and pediatric hospitals. Non-community hospitals include federal hospitals (Veterans Administration, Department of Defense, and Indian Health Service hospitals), long-term hospitals, psychiatric hospitals, alcohol/chemical dependency treatment facilities and hospitals units within institutions such as prisons.

Some community hospitals may not be included in the SEDD because their data were not provided by the data source. To identify community hospitals, the SEDD must be linked to the AHA Annual Survey of Hospitals by the AHA hospital identifier.

The following tables show the number of ED visits and hospitals by year. The tables report counts by community, nonrehabilitation hospitals, and other types of hospitals. Information from AHA Annual Survey of Hospitals was used to determine if a hospital was a community hospital. Some hospitals could not be categorized as community or non-community hospitals because these hospitals could not be matched with AHA information. This occurs when a hospital closed in a previous year or when the hospital does not report to the AHA. Please note that the ED visit counts for the SEDD are specific to ED visits that do not result in an admission to the same hospital. The ED visits counts from the AHA include total ED visits which include ED visits that do result in an admission to the same hospital and do not result in an admission to the same hospital.